TN labour department to meet tech companies over layoff crisis

The Tamil Nadu's labour department has sought for a meeting with representatives of Information Technology companies after allegations of illegal layoffs by a bunch of employeesBharani Vaitheesvaran | ET Bureau | May 19, 2017, 09:01 IST

The Tamil Nadu's labour department has sought for a meeting with representatives of Information Technology companies after allegations of illegal terminations from a bunch of employees were preliminarily heard by the state joint commissioner-Labour on Wednesday.

The meeting, unscheduled so far, will be coordinated by the software industry body Nasscom.

The state government's call for a meeting assumes significance as it lays the foundation for a broad-based government role in the terminations.

“The government will prepare a list of companies based on complaints from employees on terminations. The government will also call for the meeting and decide the date. Nasscom will coordinate to ensure the presence of representatives of these companies,“ K Purushothaman, Senior Director, Tamil Nadu and Kerala-Nasscom.

The Nasscom official said the purpose of the meeting was to “understand the intensity of the issue“.

A top official with the state labour department, on conditions of anonymity, said the move was to probe further and get more specific cases to ascertain if the claim that the companies had adopted illegal measures to make employees resign, an allegation from forum NDLFIT and FITE, was true. “We have also advised these unions to file formal petitions under the Industrial Disputes Act so that it can move up to the labour court.“

The official said the meeting is likely to happen by the end of this month.

Cognizant, which has been at the receiving end of union action recently, has said it will have nearly one lakh employees “retrained in the specialised areas of digital“. It has also said there were no lay-offs, only the usual annual performance review. Other companies too ha ve held similar stances.

Staffing firms assisting IT firms find talent see the current year's involuntary exits as a seasonal event and not indicative of a transformation.

Even as Nasscom insists that emerging skills in areas like artificial intelligence and machine learning would be vital in the years to come, there is hope that the industry will reinvent itself to sustain its intake of talent.

Uma Srinivasan, President, Randstad India said: “The current workforce optimisation that we are witnessing is season-led since this is the post-appraisal season. Most of the organisations are letting go of non performers and are using this opportunity to optimise the workforce, given the business uncertainty which the industry is facing at this point.“